Celestia Forums

Can anyone teach me how to make Earth Impacting Asteroids (even if it has nothing to do with actual data)? Thank you.

Celestia does not have collision detection. The effects of an impact have to be designed and shown as part of the Addon.

You have to define the asteroid's orbit so it intersects the Earth's orbit at a time when the Earth is at the same position in space as the asteroid.

Perhaps the easiest way to do that would be to use trial-and-error: adjust the orbital parameters of an asteroid that is known to come very close to the Earth until the asteroid and the Earth intersect.

I would start with the asteroid, apophis, 2004 MN4

Some ssc files to play with are here http://www.celestiaproject.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8570

selden wrote:Perhaps the easiest way to do that would be to use trial-and-error: adjust the orbital parameters of an asteroid that is known to come very close to the Earth until the asteroid and the Earth intersect.

Or give the asteroid a SampledOrbit with the Earth location (LongLat) of your choice as it??s reference. Then let the last entry in the XYZ file read 0 0 0. Simpler than that it can??t get.

- rthorvald

Make the asteroid have the exact same orbit of Earth (copy EllipticalOrbit{ ... } stuff). Then change the orbital period of the asteroid. You'll get an asteroid that hits the Earth every so often.